We were very high up in the mountains; nearly seven thousand feet. From the window you could see the snowcapped peaks and in the early morning the highest was rose-coloured against that extraordinary blue sky. It would become as bright as a new moon, sharply clear. By midmorning it would disappear; clouds and fog would cover it, but you would still see the lower mountains and the valley intensely blue, dark and mysterious. No wonder they worship the mountains. They say the gods lived there, the perfect ones, the great ones, from where they looked down toward the south, pouring out their blessing.
It would probably begin to rain in a few days, at least the local people said so, for there had been a rather dry spell. They warned that when the rains began, not to walk in the fields and over the hills for there would be snakes, and to be careful where one trod. People here were very poor and as you walked through the village you would see the filth of it. Nobody seemed to mind and they carried on with their daily lives adding more. Perhaps the rains would wash it away, but then the roads would be muddy and the paths covered over with water coming down from the hills. This would be welcome.
You walked in the woods, meeting many monkeys and an occasional deer, or you would see a big bear. They kept their distance. On the road one afternoon there were two boys, probably brothers, one a little taller than the other. They stood with their arms stretched out and their hands open, in torn rags, dirty, unkempt. They were begging, asking for money, and as we had no coins in our pocket we asked them to come to the hut where we were living and we fed them. One has rarely seen two children eat so much. Several cups of milk disappeared and quantities of rice and vegetables. You could see their tummies expand. Presently they had their fill and went away. Again in a few days there were those two boys on the road with arms outstretched and open hands, the blue sky above them. We asked them to come to eat but this time they shook their heads and with their thin fingers said no. Their mother had told them not to eat at the house of a Hindu for they were Muslims. They wanted only money and not the food cooked by another community. One almost had tears. They will remain hungry and the slow corruption of time and tradition is going to destroy them and others.
The rains came and went and the road through the village was muddy. The two boys and a little girl were standing in the same place as before and as one passed by they looked the other way. They didn’t want money, let alone food. You stopped and talked to them but they wouldn’t reply. There was no smile on their faces; they were hard, almost strangely angry. Their parents were doing a thorough job and slowly the seed of hatred was being sown in them. From then on they would ever be separate, congealed in their own antagonisms, bitterness and anger.
A new family came with little children. The next morning in the bright clear sunlight a servant had the baby resting on her bare outstretched legs. The baby was face down and, talking to it, the servant had taken a little oil and was rubbing its back, bottom, legs and on its head. She must have been doing it for at least ten minutes. Then she turned the baby over and gently, smoothly rubbed its arms, chest and tummy. Every part of it was oiled and rubbed and cared for. Presently somebody brought buckets of hot and cold water. She washed the baby and used some sort of powder that washed away the oil and it never once cried. The baby was so small, probably about six months, and presently it was wrapped in a clean white cloth. The baby looked so happy, pleased, and it was carried inside. Every morning in the sunlight it was bathed in oil, talked to, cared for and every morning there was no crying. There was only that gurgling noise that babies make when they are happy. They were there for several weeks. The mother and the father would be playing cards with others, endlessly talking. You would see the baby in the mother’s lap being petted, hugged and kissed, but the servant looked on and took it away when the parents had enough of it.
The pines were now washed clean, fresh, and the grass was bright blue-green.
‘I would like this morning to really go into this problem of discipline. We need it in schools, in the classrooms, in the dormitories. On the playing fields discipline is observed for the students enjoy playing. There you don’t have to tell them what to do except how to hold the cricket bat, the tennis racket or the hockey stick; they take to it so easily. But in the classroom it is a matter of threat, punishment, reward and encouragement. How can we, not only as teachers but as human beings, bring about a natural order in ourselves?’
Have you noticed that when children are very carefully looked after by their mothers, really cared for and loved, there is a relationship between them, a subtle wordless communication in which the child is completely happy? They know that they are secure, know that they are really cared for and loved. This care and love does not bring about in the child any form of the resistance from which arises violent expression when they grow up. When there is overpopulation, when both parents have to earn a livelihood, when the children are neglected or cared for by the community, a nurse or someone else, you can see a different expression in the children. They are already being disciplined in the orthodox sense of that word. They are already conforming, and the discipline that is a slow death has already begun.
That inexpressible relationship between the mother and the child, the warmth, the subtle contact through words, through caress, through tenderness, can never exist in a crèche or kindergarten. It is this quality of tenderness between the mother and the child that creates the climate in which the child grows and learns, because it trusts, because it has no fear. This learning is the essence of order. Discipline in the sense of control, suppression, imitation, conformity with its reward and punishment, makes for violence. The word discipline itself means to learn, and not the enforcement it has come to mean. And as civilisation is becoming more and more industrialised, more expensive, both parents go out to earn and the child is neglected. If you are rich you hand it over to a nurse or send it off to public school to get rid of it as quickly as possible. And the boy or girl finds themselves in an impersonal world with little relationship, with others like themselves, bullied by the older ones. And because they need security they instinctively form groups and imitate the older children. They do not want to be different, so the slow death of conformity takes place. This is known by all dictators and by other governments. Then discipline in the sense of enforcement is necessary and the culture in which they are brought up naturally encourages them to be violent.
Violence is the expression of insecurity. It is the language of the insecure. It is only the insecure that revolt, that create havoc in the world; it is only those who are insecure who bring war. The brain can only function harmoniously, easily, happily in security. When there is insecurity the mind is distorted, and thought which is seeking security tries to find it in division, in separation, as in nationalism, in belief, in dogma, in formulas. This very division is the denial of security. So thought seeking security breeds insecurity. From this flows all corruption, violence, ambition, competition. If we understand, as teachers and human beings, that infinite care and the tenderness of parents is necessary to the child and between the teacher and student, then there is order which is an expression of intelligence. Intelligence is this sensitivity, this infinite care by the parent, which cannot be given by the government or a trained bureaucrat.
The teacher was silent for a while and then said, ‘I follow what you are saying, I see the logic of it, but how am I to establish this sensitive relationship with a group of students? I really don’t know them and they don’t know me. They come with antagonistic resistance, running from one class to another, dashing off to the playing field and finally to their homes. The classes are growing larger instead of smaller. I can’t physically talk to every student or care for them. One hasn’t in oneself the energy for all this. In limited time one has to teach so many subjects each term. They must have acquired certain subjects by the end of that term. There is constant pressure upon the students and teachers which brings about a great strain. Taking all this in, how am I, wanting a decent relation with the student, to bring this about? Knowing the difficulty of the student, his possibly broken home, that the parents are occupied with their own pleasures or worries, knowing there are gangs in the schools, knowing the students are reluctant to learn, knowing too that most of them are in revolt and that they think they know everything, what is one to do?’
This is a question that is asked all over the world and it requires a great deal of intelligence on the part of the educator to take into consideration the insecurity at home, the unconscious desire of the student to find security in a group of his own and to turn his back on society. The teacher knows the parents have rarely established this sensitive relationship with the child and knows too that he himself is seeking security in relationship and is confused and in misery. Knowing all this, not only verbally but actually experiencing it without running away from it, aware of the fullness of it, then when the students rush into the classroom, have them sit quietly for two or three minutes. Explain the necessity of it, that when the body is quiet there is a self-recollectedness which brings sensitivity. Then both teacher and student can share this quality, discuss its implications before beginning the normal study of that particular class.
Discuss and teach through dialogue rather than merely impart knowledge. The most important thing is to bring about sensitivity in the relationship between the teacher and the student. In this sensitivity the authoritarian spirit disappears and the honesty of understanding and care is felt by the student. Therefore they will listen and this very act of listening brings about its own order. It is this order, born of sensitivity and intelligence, that frees the mind of all resistance. Order is a movement in freedom and this movement comes when you understand the nature of disorder. Violence is disorder; you cannot bring about order through violence. So one has to understand very deeply the whole issue of human action and life.